From the Files of the FBI

Your article listing certain major cities in the U.S., along with composite crime rate statistics, indicated the data were from ”the FBI list of felony rates in U.S. cities.” The FBI has not published any tabulation of crime rates for individual cities. The only thing we show in the Uniform Crime Reports bulletins, for the cities that you listed, is the total number of offenses of each individual classification reported by the police agency represented. We do not convert those figures into terms of the number of offenses per unit of population for individual cities.

Another defect involves the use of 1950 census figures in calculating current crime rates for individual cities, which distorts the picture to the extent that the population of those cities has changed since 1950. Also, in calculating the rates, you grouped together in one figure all reported offenses giving, in effect, equal weight statistically to larceny and murder, and larceny offenses generally comprise over half of the total.